Homeless murderer of Ukrainian refugee in Charlotte prompts security review (09-03-2025--Hour2)

What's going on. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio and Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all of the links. Become a patron, go to dpeteclendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free, write to your smartphone or tablet, and again, thank you so much for your support. So you know me, I am a giver, okay, And I watch the various local govc meetings and such so you don't have to. I watch a lot of things so you don't have to. And today it was the emergency meeting of the Metropolitan Transit Commission. It wasn't that bad, actually, I mean it was okay. I think they could have done a better job of telling people from the general public that shut up, we don't want to hear from you before the meeting. I think that would have been the time to do that, rather than end your meeting with calls from the general public to be able to make comments and you saying no, we're not going to hear from you at this meeting, and so maybe we'll have to schedule another meeting where we will listen to the two or three of you who showed up to speak to us about this issue that we care so so very much about, namely safety and security on the Charlotte area transit system. Obviously, this was prompted by some pretty bad responses from local officials after the murder of a twenty three year old Ukrainian refugee named Arena Zarutska, who was murdered stabbed to death in cold blood on a train in the South End a little over a week ago, and the sort of blase or tipid responses from various elected officials prompted even more outrage. It like, why are you not taking this more seriously, particularly as you are trying to convince us to approve a one cent sales tax increase for expansion of the very transit system where the murder occurred. And then I think, after like twenty four hours of that kind of blowback and then starting to realize, oh my gosh, you know, we've got millions of dollars in a marketing campaign at risk now because of this murder, and our response to the murder seemed like I'm not saying I know their motives, but it just kind of seemed like they wanted it to go away, to just not comment on it, just sweep it under the rug so as to not jeopardize the vote. And then it turned out that they're response might actually be jeopardizing the vote. So then they held this emergency security meeting, and again I watched it. You're welcome, Okay. So here's what Mark Garrison, our news director, wrote up here for the WBT dot com report. Charlotte Transit now admits that the homeless man who stabbed a young woman to death on the city's light rail on August twenty second never paid to ride the train. No way, I would have never get Actually I did guess that. I totally guessed that because obviously the homeless guy got on the train where we don't do any kind of fair collection, we don't do any kind of monitoring for that sort of stuff. And it becomes as Edwin Peacock pointed out, and we played his video from Friday night when he rode the light rail up and down from the South to the New and back again, and you know, he's videotaping himself in front of a group of guys in the back of the train car, and he called it a rolling shelter for them. They were treating it as a rolling shelter. So anybody who has been on the light rail line knows of these issues, and they know that fair collection is spotty at best. And so when there's a homeless guy on the train, I think the logical assumption is that the homeless guy is not paying. Do you know why that's a logical assumption, because he's homeless, right exactly there. If he's got some money, chances are he's not paying a fare, right, he's using the money to buy something else that is of greater importance to him, especially when not having paid the fare is only going to get you just tossed off the train if you're caught. If you're caught, and that's not even that, that's not even likely under the current sort of honor system that we've been running on. And that's really what it's been, an honor system. And so I pointed out a week and a half ago after the murder of this woman that they need to do something to fortify access. Right, you need to make sure that people who are getting on the train are paying to get on the train, because people who are homeless, they may not be the most stable of mind. They they're they're not going to get on the trains if they're going to get booted off immediately or prevented from getting on the trains. And there are different systems around America that have addressed this in various ways. And I mentioned at the time that the Long Island Railroad they police this through a conductor that walks through. They've got the little whole puncher thing, and they take your ticket and they punch your ticket. You get a ticket out of the machine. You pay it the machine, you know, a kiosk. You get a little paper ticket and you get on the train and then somebody comes along and they clip it from for whatever station you're going to, and then they stick it in the back of the seat. There are actually little holders on the seat where your ticket goes, and there's a person on every train. That's how the Long Island Railroad does it. Now the subway is a bit different. They have controlled access through turnstiles. And these are not just like your I mean some of them, yeah, some of them are just like the waist high ones where you walk through it. You know, you get a little card and you scan it and bebeep and you walk through and it allows one person at time. But then people sometimes jump those they jump over them and run in. And when you have people that are evading the fare, and if you don't have enforcement, what they have found is that it increases crime in the mass transit system. Do you remember a couple of years the Governor of New York sent the National Guard right down to the subway system to patrol because of the crime situation. People were getting thrown in front of subway cars and being killed and such. There was violence and robberies and such, and so she sent out the National Guard to help police the subways, which should send a message that the visual presence of highly trained armed security acts as a deterrent against crime. And if you reduce the fair jumpers, you reduce that the people who evade the fairs. You keep criminals out, and if you have a presence of law enforcement, you keep crime limited. This is not reinventing the wheel here, people. Okay, these are things that have been known for a while. So today at the Metropolitan Transit Commission meeting, they discussed greater enforcement of fair collection and they're going to decouple the fair collecting from security because I guess, right now, you've got this private security firm that acts as you know, security for all of the CAT system, and they just kind of hang out on the platform. Some of them may jump on a train, ride it down, get off, hang out at that platform, get on the train again. Whatever. They kind of go up and down all around. But it's not a constant presence. There's not one security personnel on every train. So now they're talking about I guess decoupling from security to have a fair collection agent at the train stops. But why not just like it's not like we've got a billion trains here, we only have a few, Like, why not just put one on every train. When I was a kid, my grandpa died with Alzheimer's, and before he died, my mom and my dad took care of him as he got worse. Forty years ago, there were no treatments and not much support for caregivers and family. But things are different today because of the work of so many people, including the Alzheimer's Association of Western Carolina. It's a great organization with awesome people with huge hearts. I've been a supporter for twenty five years. This cause means a lot to me. I participate in the annual Walk to end Alzheimer's and I'm leading a Charlotte team again this year and it's called once again Pete's Pack. You can sign up and you can join the team and walk with us. It's on October eighteenth, that truest field. Sign up at alz dot org slash Walk and then you could search for my team name Pete's Pack. There's also a link at the petepod dot com. There's also a link in the description of this podcast. Also, I'll be am seeing the Gastonia Walk on October eleventh, and so you can make a team and join that one too, or make a donation and help me hit my goal of five thousand dollars. If you do, I really appreciate it. There are a bunch of other walks all over the Carolinas. You can go to alz dot org slash Walk for all the dates and locations. We're closer than ever to stopping Alzheimer's. Can you help us get there? Will you walk with me? For a different future, for families, for more time for treatments. This is why we walk let me go to the text line here. This is from the WBT text line driven by Libertybewig GMC. I've been accused of profiling. Yeah, yeah, I do profile. Oh my gosh, I can't believe he said that. Why would you admit that? Because I do, and so do you. By the way, so does everybody. Everybody profiles to some degree. There's actually a whole division in the FBI. Have you heard They made TV shows about it, like profiling, trying to develop a profile, get in the mind of somebody, you know, like based on characteristics and this sort of thing. So, yeah, what the studies have shown it's the same thing in line with the broken windows theory of policing, which is, you know, if you don't allow the windows to stay broken and you go in and you fix them up, it sends a signal that this is not acceptable. If you allow the broken windows to remain broken, more windows get broken and more crime enters the area because people know that nobody cares, right, So that's part of the that's part of the psychology of all of this. Same thing goes with the fair jumpers, those who avoid paying the fares to go into the mass transit systems and such. When you allow that sort of behavior to occur, then you get more of it, and criminals then take over your transit system, and then people who are not criminals do not want to ride your transit system anymore, let alone vote for a tax increase to expand it. So this is the dilemma that the Charlotte officials are having now because of the murder of this young woman on what August twenty second seth texts into the text line. Let's be honest, the folks wanting the tax hike don't even ride the train. They don't care. They just need a place to launder money. Do you launder money on the train? I did not know that. Is that a special car? I'm gonna have to check that out. No, A lot, look, a lot of this has to do with the development deals right along the train line. You saw what happened in South End. You get all of this development that gets clustered around the train line, and that's by design. And so yeah, doing an extension of the rail line does promote more development along that rail line. Now, the question is would that development occur in other parts of the city, right? Are you just sort of just directing the development to the train line when it would otherwise occur elsewhere. This is also sort of the economic argument about paying for stadium renovations, and don't worry, we do that too. But if you pay for that, the idea is, oh, look at all the economic activity it generates, right, does it? Or does it just move it from other competing venues? Right? Like, Okay, I can't go to this stadium because it doesn't exist. But I have these disposable dollars and I'm going to spend them on something else. Maybe I go out to eat, or I go to a play or some theater production something. So I'm still spending the money on entertainment. It's just not going to that particular stadium. So I do believe, yes, that part of it is that you have a lot of the people that are pushing this or pushing it because they look at it as an economic development tool, a tool that will probably help them in their enterprises. Sure, Dean asks if homeless people avoid paying on toll roads or entering be of a stadium. No, No, Well, Also, I guess homeless people with a vehicle, if they drove in the toll lane, they would probably get caught, Well, they probably wouldn't have a license plate that's up to date. Maybe they could have one of the dirty thirties, the thirty day tags. You know, how come private business has ways of controlling it and the government remains clueless. Well, because if the private sector doesn't figure out a way to protect its revenue stream, it goes out of business. Game on Week one starts now, and every touchdown brings you closer to a payout. 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In Connecticut, help is available for a problem gambling Call eight eight eight seven eight nine seven seven seven seven or visit CCPG dot org. Play responsibly on behalf of boothill, casino and resort Kansas. Fees may apply in Illinois twenty one plus. Age and eligibility varies by jurisdiction void in Ontario. Bonus bets expire seven days after issuance. See Sportsbook dot DraftKings dot com. Slash Promos NFL Sunday Ticket offer for new subscribers only and autos until canceled. Digital games and commercial use excluded. Restrictions apply additional NFL Sunday Ticket terms or at YouTube dot com slash go Slash NFL Sunday Tickets Slash terms Limited time offer. This story by Will Lewis at qcnews dot com Queen City News. City leaders are taking action to improve safety on local buses and light rail trains after a string of violent incidents, including a deadly stabbing. Charlotte Mayor Vylyles, who also chairs the Metropolitan Transit Commission, has called a special meeting that occurred today at nine am. I watched it to address growing concerns about safety on Charlotte's public transit system, operated by CATS Charlotte Area Transit System. The move follows the tragic death of twenty three year old Arena Zarutzka, who was fatally stabbed on the Links Blue Line on August twenty second. Police said she was attacked by a man she did not know. He's been identified as thirty one year old to Carlos to de Wan Dewan ord or dju Won, probably the one to Carlos Brown Junior, who now faces a charge of first degree murder. The surveillance video reportedly shows that he was on the train, she came in, sat in front of him, and about four minutes later, without any warning whatsoever, he just stood up, stabbed her three times in the neck and then got off the train and she died on the scene. Police caught him. He did not attempt to flee. It's not like he ran away. And so cat's officials say, oh, the system worked, see because people saw it and they called nine one one, and nine one one responded and they found the guy within six minutes, and it all worked well. And I would submit it quote worked. In other words, you caught him because he did not run, because he's deranged. He did not run. Had he fled, had he run away, you probably would not have caught him in six minutes number one. Number two. There is this line that is being advanced that because of the nature of the attack, there was literally nothing that you know, police or security could have done. And if you're saying that, you know the guy stood up without any kind of provocation. He was deranged. He just saw her and just took out a knife, stood up, stabbed her, got off the train, and you would not have even had time to attempt to stop him physically, to restrain him from the attack. And that may be very well true, but that is not the only way that scenario, that hypothetical plays out. So if you're going to use this nothing we could have done hypothetical, it's only honest that you include the other hypothetical, the counter hypothetical, which is he never would have attempted it had he seen a security official or a law enforcement officer on the train with him. And this is a direct response to the mayor of Davidson, Randy Knox, who made this very comment today on he was zoom calling in. He was virtually joining. He's in Colorado apparently, and so he was, he was joining remotely, and he made this argument like, I'm not sure there's anything that additional security would have done just because the guy attacked her without any provocation. It happened so quickly, there was nothing anybody could do right. And again, that is one way that that hypothetically would have played out. You have a security officer who is on the train, the guy is deranged and he's intent on murdering the girl. He stands up and murders her, and then the security guard engages afterwards. That's one hypothetical. The other hypothetical is that the deranged man sees the cop and does not attack the girl because the mere presence acts as a determ, which we know to be true. We know this to be true. Even democrats know this to be true. They just spent five years denying it because of Saint George Floyd and the radical communist lefties in their base demanded a defund the police campaign and that all the cops are racist and all the police institutions are racist, and so they had to go along with all of this. They were cowardly. They did not want to push back against the stupid narrative, or they believed it themselves. By the way, I just saw this. Matthew Iglesias of the Left. He writes a substack newsletter called slow Boring. He was one of the founders of vox dot com, and he writes, today, how everybody, even up to Zoron Mamdani, the Kami Jihati adjacent mayoral candidate up in New York City, everybody is now against defunding the police. He says, good for him and good for everybody else. But if more people had been willing to be pain in the butt contrarians in the spring of twenty twenty, maybe we could have avoided this whole dead end. Yeah, some people like me were saying defunding the police is a very stupid thing and Democrats should not be signing on to this dumb assery. He says, defunding the police is now deader than a door nail, as witnessed by Mamdani disavowing it while campaigning to become mayor of New York City. That interesting zorin Mamdani, who will not condemn the phrase globalize the Antifada from the river to the sea. Right, That's why I call him Gihati adjacent. Right, So he won't condemn any of that stuff. He won't disavow any of that stuff, any of his previous comments on that, He's not distancing himself from any of that stuff. But on the defunding the police, yes, now he is disavowing that effort. Now he's walking that back. When people started talking nonsense about this after George Floyd's murder, I couldn't help but point out that they were wrong. Iglesias said. Research came out way before the summer of fiery but mostly peaceful rioting that the benefits of police hiring that were part of the two thousand and nine Obama stimulus bill, right Bill Clinton. Remember it funded a whole bunch of law enforcement positions. This is not new research, This is understood. People understand this. I think progressives view it as cringe and unfair to even talk about this today, since, after all, few cities actually cut police funding. But that just underscores how unwise it was to let the energy of the police reform moven go off the rails like it did. The opportunity cost was immense, and I think the country would have been much better off over the last five years if there'd been more and faster pushback. Right, But I think you're forgetting Orange Man bad, therefore defund the police. That was the calculation. 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Talk about a return on investment, Right, you got to check out Incentive trip Kit for your business. Visit incentive tripkit dot com because great trips deserve even better returns. Jeff on the text line says, listening to the stories coming out about cats, it seems like it's the wild West out there, no one enforcing any rules. How can we invite Trump to bring the National Guard in to make our streets safe? Well, you know, the mayor could request assistance from the governor there. That's something that they could do. The North Carolina legislature could fund more local police. They could do block grants for hiring and salaries for law enforcement officers. Right, these are some solution in the past year. According to Queen City News, in November twenty twenty three, a writer was stabbed after arguing with another passenger. Last summer, and off duty security guard got into a fight on a bus. That's spilled into uptown streets, and during the same summer last year there were two other stabbings and a shooting within just one month. Let me go over to the phones here and chat with Bain. Hello, Ban, Welcome to the show. I p hey. Theoretically, I understand the argument that extra security may not have saved that young lady's life, but I think that's a very shallow approach. And I can tell you this, if he didn't have a ticket and couldn't get on, she'd be alive today. Correct, Yeah, he did not have a ticket. That's what they think. Let's start. Let's start with the simplest approach that's easy to take care of now before we start bringing in the National Guard. You've got to have a ticket. So what they're looking for. What they're looking to do is some sort of a validator system where you buy the ticket and a lot of people buy them and they're just on their smartphones and such, and so you would buy the ticket, get on the train. There would be some sort of a validation machine or something that you would then I guess, scan your phone against this machine and then if somebody walks through that you can show your phone that you're validated, but if somebody doesn't walk through, then there's no validation. It doesn't matter if it's a paper ticket or it's on your phone, you know. Right, that's what you still got to have an all right, you've got to have another set of eyes, whether it's security or volunteers, to say who has a ticket who doesn't. Right on the Long Island Railroad, those guys were not law enforcement officers that punched. Your ticket, right, correct, Yeah, they're l double R employee And that's what they're talking about doing. And this new guy they brought in four or five months ago, Osness, the new director of security for CATS. They created this position. He's former he was a former New York Metropolitan Transit Authority UH employee. He's former FBI. He's now in charge of security for CATS. He's been on the job like four months, UH, and he's he said, like, they're going to be splitting there, decoupling the UH security from the fair collection and so the fair collectors or the validators or whoever is going to be walking around, they'll be cat's employees. And that's what most systems do. Right, right, And to go back one more step, did this man have a record also, Yes, lengthy in a violent record. Yes, isn't that interesting? Yeah, he had been he had been in prison, you take it. Yeah, he had been in prison for like five years or something. He had gotten out. When back home to his parents, he began acting crazy and agressive and that's why they finally kicked him out. And then he had another meet up with law enforcement. And that's what you know. When he was at the hospital, they did a wellness check on him because he was talking crazy, and he said that you know, that man made materials had been injected into his body that direct when he walks and talks and all this other stuff. And he got angry with the cops when they were like, well, that sounds like a medical issue, not a law enforcement issue. So then he calls nine to one one to get more cops out there, and they're like, okay, now you're abusing the nine one one system. And then they brought him into custody and then he was taken before a judge and the judge and his own public defender said like, this guy needs a mental evaluation, and they had ordered that and then released him. And you and you're right about that, and I mean and that is sad and that is hard. You know, we have terrorist watch lists for people that may do harm the masses. When you're convicted of a violent clime, you should not be allowed to be on public transit for a period. There should be a type of watch list for violent people. I don't know how you would police that facial recognition software. Maybe, I don't know. Ai. I'm not sure, Vane. I appreciate the call, and I think that's you may get into some double jeopardy kinds of implications there. I'm not sure the system on the light rail did not work for the woman that died, says Stanley. Hopefully a strong Republican candidate for Charlotte Mayer will emerge. Well, I'll tell you what after the news. I will tell you how this story and how the crime issue is now making its way through the election for mayor, which is just a couple weeks away. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, So if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepetecalnarshow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.